


The Trust Job

by squireofgeekdom



Series: The Lost Light Job [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Gen, Shippy Gen, read it as gen or pre-relationship as you like, written with a shippy bent but no actual romantic content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 14:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14380722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom
Summary: Rodimus and Drift talk about the aftermath of a con gone south, and how to be honest when your life is lying.





	The Trust Job

**Author's Note:**

> Back in the good ol' days when Leverage was on Netflix, rimahadley and I came up with a MTMTE Leverage AU with Megatron as the Mastermind, Rodimus as the Grifter, Drift as the Hitter, Nautica as the Hacker, and Skids as the Thief, and we ended up with a lot of thoughts and feels and backstory for Grifter!Rodimus in particular, and for the team as a whole. This fic is me coping with some of those feels. 
> 
> You don't need to know Leverage to follow this fic, just that the premise is about a group of conmen doing high tech Robin-Hood style good, and that everyone has a specific role based on their skill set.

“Hey, there you are,” Rodimus says, leaning around the doorframe of Drift’s room. 

“Hey,” Drift looks over from the closet. 

“I - we left everything the same.” Rodimus says, noticing Drift’s browsing. 

“My grey hoodie’s missing.” Drift says as he flicks through a few hangers. 

“Oh. That. That I may have borrowed.” He says, trying to kick any potential undertones of ‘because I missed you so much that I might not have been holding it together so great’ under the metaphorical rug in his voice.  “I’ll give it back. I’ll wash it and then give it back.” he amends.

“Don’t worry about it.” Drift says, “Why are you still standing there?” He asks, nodding at Rodimus, still hovering in the doorway.

“Can I come in?”

“Since when do you ask?” Drift says with a half-grin and a roll of his eyes. “C’mon. I missed you.” He adds, “A lot.” 

Rodimus bites his lip, but comes into the room anyway. 

Drift watches his face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s …” Rodimus starts. “You should never have been in there, Drift. I should never have let that happen.”

“Yeah,” Drift admits, “But I made a choice.”

“Did you?” Rodimus asks, and then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I - that wasn’t what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” Drift asks, a slight edge to his voice.

Rodimus slumps down in his usual seat. “I'm sorry, I've just - I've been thinking about this a lot since…”

“Thinking about?”

“About - me. About grifting.” Rodimus sighs. “You know why I was - well, pretty much running solo before -”

“Not always solo,” Drift says with a nudge, and Rodimus smiles.

“Not always solo.” He repeats. “But this is the first time in a long time that I’ve worked with a crew for this - long.”

“Because of Doubledealer.”

“Because of Doubledealer.”

“I don’t - “ Drift shakes his head. “You’re not working with another grifter on your team anymore. It’s just -”

“It wasn’t just -” Rodimus sighs. “People died. My people. Because they were listening to me.”

“It wasn’t your -”

“I - it’s -”  He pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s hard to explain. Words are hard.”

“That’s not usually your problem.” Drift says, only the faintest edge of teasing in his tone. 

“That  _ is  _ the problem. I -” He bites his lip again. “Words are too easy to manipulate. Not just words - I - I make people like me. Or - think whatever I want them to about me, so they do what I need them to do. That’s what grifters  _ do.  _ I’ve done that since before I was  _ Rodimus _ . That's why I'm still - here. And I don’t -” He takes a moment to catch his breath. “Everyone who went down because of Doubledealer, they did exactly what I needed them to do. They walked right into a trap just like every mark I’ve ever worked. And when I realized you were gone, that you’d - that you’d taken the fall, I just - I thought ‘There you go, Rodimus, you’ve done it again,’”

“Rodimus,” Drift says, “You don’t treat me like - a mark. I’ve seen you with marks, you don’t treat anyone on the team like -”

“I - don’t I?” Rodimus says, hunching in on himself. “Sometimes I think I don’t know how to turn it off. That I’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t - I don’t know how to  _ talk  _ and not have it be - be ‘turning on the Rodimus charm’.”

“Oh, I think Megs would attest well to the fact that you can be plenty annoying. I think the very  _ last  _ word he’d use would be ‘charming’.”

“And I never annoy marks?” Rodimus says, “‘Sides, Megs has never found anything charming in his  _ life,  _ unless it’s our sad cop. It’s not really a fair comparison.”

“Wait,” Drift says. “Wait wait wait - is  _ this  _ why you were so standoffish around me, after we all moved in, for like - hell, it was nearly the whole first six months here.”

Rodimus looks down and nods, his face heating up. 

“You were worried you would - what? Accidentally grift me?”

“I -” Rodimus hides his face in his hands. “I - wanted the team to, you know, like me, more or less, because we were working together, right? But - then we’d been working together a while, and we all moved in here, and I realized, I - I wanted you to like me. Like,  _ me  _ me _. _ For real. And I - I didn’t know how to deal with that. I  _ don’t  _ know how to deal with that.”

“You haven’t - “

“I know what everyone - but it’s not - it’s not really my area of expertise. It’s not really my area at all, most of the time. I’m not even sure who  _ me  _ is, a lot of the time.”  Rodimus says. “And everytime I ended up talking to you, or - I’d just catch myself and think, you know, ‘is this how I’d talk to a mark?’ I just - I don’t think I know how else to be.”

“I kind of thought you hated me.”

“I was kind of a jerk.”

“Why did you start talking to me, then?”

Rodimus has a tiny, chagrined smile. “It was really hard not to talk to you? And,” He adds, “I don’t know. I realized that sometimes I was starting to act like - like I do on my own, but around you guys. Around you.”

“Well,” Drift says, “I guess you’re not the only charming one.”

“Drift -”

“Rodimus,” Drift says. “Have you ever lied to me? And,” He adds as Rodimus opens his mouth. “I don’t mean saying you’ll do the laundry and not doing it.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t -”

“You lie to  _ marks  _ all the time. You don’t lie to us. Not like that. And,” Drift says, “If we’re going by our default habits, mine are worse.”

“You -” 

“You lie to people, I killed them.”

“You changed.”

“And you don’t think you might have too? You don’t think - ”

“I change  _ all the time _ . Changing who I am is what I  _ do.  _ I put on personas -”

“Playing a person isn’t the same as -”

_ “-  _ How am I supposed to know who I am after - hell, Rodimus isn’t even -”

“It’s the name you chose,” Drift says, reaching over and grabbing Rodimus’ hand. “And if anyone says that’s not real, they’ve got me to deal with. I’m still your hitter.” 

“And you’re the one who said the con was a bad idea. You said we shouldn’t listen to Prowl, you said Overlord was an impossible mark, you said we shouldn’t pull in someone from another crew. And you were right.”

“And I didn’t back out. Because I believe in this team, and I believe in you. Not because you -  _ grifted _ me into it.”

“And -”

“And you were wrong. Everyone on this team has been wrong more than enough. If we reach back into  _ my  _ nostalgia file -”

“It shouldn’t have been you that went in for it.” 

“No. But I’m the hitter. Sometimes that means taking the hits.”

“But I’m the grifter. I should be able to keep everyone from hitting you.”

“You know that’s not how it works.”

“It should be how it works.” Rodimus says. “It  _ would  _ be how it works if I were  _ better  _ at this.”

Drift reaches out and tugs Rodimus in closer. “You can’t do everything. That’s why you have a team.”

“I’m not letting you go away again.” Rodimus says, looking at Drift intensely. “I mean it, Drift. You’ve spent too much of your life in places like that.”

“And if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.” Drift says, “Besides,” He adds, a little levity sneaking back in, “now I have a team that can pull off high-stakes prison breaks and - and conscript prison medics -”

“That’s what we do here.” Rodimus says, rolling with the hint of humor in Drift's voice. “We take law-abiding citizens and turn them to the dark side. Sad cops, Grumpy docs, we do it all.” He switches over to his ‘mocking Megatron’ voice. “We provide… Leverage.” 

Drift laughs. “I’m never letting you go to prison. Never ever.”

“What? Come on, I could handle it. You don’t think I’m tough enough?”

“You’d be bored out of your mind within a  _ day _ .”  

“And what? You just meditated your way through?”

“You should try it sometime.” Drift teases.

“And then what?” Rodimus looks up, “You’ll let me take the hit the next time?” Drift laughs. “I’ll do it. I’ll be the best at meditating. And - and hitting things. I’ll get super good, and then you can just -”

“What? Stay here and make curry for all of you?”

“That sounds amazing, actually. Very few people end up in prison while making curry.”

“Now you’re just hungry, aren’t you?”

“Little bit.”

“C’mon,” Drift says, clasping a hand on Rodimus’ shoulder, “I haven’t been able to hit anything in three months. Let’s spar. I’ll be rusty,” He adds, “Maybe you can even get in a hit.” 

“Hey! For all you know I’ve been training, like,  _ super  _ hard the past three months.”

“Mmm. I’m sure.” He reaches out and taps Rodimus’ nose, “I  _ can _ tell you,  _ you _ absolutely _ cannot _ grift when you’re sparring.”

“Wait - wait, really? Oh my god, you’re right. Oh my god.”

Drift grins. “Pretty hard to keep track of microexpressions and dodge a punch at the same time. Though I  _ will  _ teach you to stop telegraphing your punches so much.”

“Yeah. Yeah sure, absolutely.”

“This doesn’t mean we can have all serious conversations while fighting.”

“Right. No. Absolutely. I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Roddy,” Drift says, looking at him. “I’m serious. Everyone can lie, and everyone tries to - to get people to like them, or persuade people. I know that you’ve got a harder time with all of that, but - it’s still a choice.”

“I -”

“Rodimus. I believe in you. I believe that you’re going to keep trying. And I’ve seen you eating day-old ramen while wearing my leggings, so -”

“One time!” 

“If that’s part of an elaborate persona, it’s certainly… unorthodox.” Drift says with a grin. “I trust you. I’m asking you to trust me.”

“I do. Drift, I do.”

“So if something like this is bothering you, you’ll tell me, instead of just avoiding me for months?”

“I - yeah. Yeah, I think I can do that.” Rodimus says. “And if you think I'm ever -”

“I'll tell you. Promise.” Drift gives him a gentle smile. “I really did miss you.”

“I missed you too.”  Rodimus says, and leans in as Drift tugs him into a tight hug. “Let's  - let's not do that again, okay? I - “

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Drift says, and Rodimus squeezes him tightly. He returns the hold before letting go. “Good. C’mon, let’s go hit each other.” he says. “If you get a hit in, I’ll make curry.”

“Oh, you’re on!” Rodimus says with a bright grin, as Drift grabs his hand to drag him down the hall.


End file.
